The Marathon
by Lossie
Summary: <html><head></head>Various sasusaku stories based on prompts from midoriland's sasusaku marathon on tumblr. Multiple AUs, many different POVs and, hopefully, countless amounts of fun. Enjoy!</html>
1. DAY 1

**A/N**: So, I'm kind of trying to participate in midoriland's sasusaku marathon-final-countdown thingy (it's all happening on tumblr - if you want to know more and see the prompts calendar, just go to midoriland's tumblr page). I've all the prompts saved on my computer and I'm going to write and/or draw something for (hopefully) each of them. Not all of them are going to be canon-complaint (and I'm talking about manga-canon, ofc), but I hope you're still going to enjoy them. I think I'll be doing sketches mostly on the weekends, because I can't carry all of my drawing equipment around with me everywhere (it's pretty heavy), whereas I can write pretty much everywhere I want (since I own a tablet, yay!).  
>So keep your fingers crossed, people, because writing a story a day is a first-time thing for me and it can go many different ways. I'm challenging myself like never before when it comes to writing and although I'm excited, I'm also very nervous.<br>Anyway, I hope you'll like this story! I'll be publishing the next one later today (since this one is actually for yesterday).  
>Enjoy! ;)<p>

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><p><strong>Day 1 - THE BEGINNING<br>**_Summary_: "In short, the Uchiha patriarch had an uncanny ability to push his buttons and one of these day there would be no Mebuki or Mikoto to stop Kizashi from committing felony." Haruno Kizashi's POV, kid!sasusaku  
><em>Rating<em>: T  
><em>Genre<em>: Family/Humor  
><em>Warnings<em>: curse words, fluff**  
><strong>

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><p>He had no idea why he agreed to do this. It was not only a fine Saturday afternoon in the middle of August which was warm and sunny, and perfect for a lazy day in a park with a good book, but it was also his first day off in a little over a month. The very last thing he wanted to do on such a day was to have dinner with people he wasn't particularly fond of.<p>

Then again his wife – for reasons unknown – was friends with Uchiha Mikoto, who had been the one to extend the invitation for said dinner when the two of them had met for tea the other day. Kizashi didn't really have a problem with Mikoto per se, since she was a pretty decent and friendly enough person.

It was Fugaku, Mikoto's nutjob of a husband, who he had a huge problem with.

They had been place on a genin team together and they had never gotten along, mostly because the Uchiha was so uptight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his arse, in two weeks you'd have a diamond. After years of death glares (on Fugaku's part), petty insults (on Kizashi's part) and countless spars that had quickly transformed into world wars, they've mutually decided to stay as far away from each other as it was possible.

It was working splendidly until their wives had met and decided to ruin everything.

"Daddy, do you think they will like it?"

His daughter twirled in front of him in a red summer dress that Mebuki had bought her for the occasion and Kizashi had to bite his tongue to stop himself before he actually said what was on his mind – which was essentially that Fugaku wasn't going to like her dress, because the man in question wasn't capable of liking anything. While Mikoto was probably going to fawn over Sakura's cuteness, it would be impossible to determine if she actually meant it or not.

That's what you got when you dealt with Uchihas. They were strange people with strange habits and strange personalities. It was simply impossible to tell what was on their minds at any given moment – besides the times when they got angry, because they had no issue whatsoever with expressing that – and it made them very hard to trust.

He still nodded, so she would have one less thing to stress over. She didn't need that kind of pressure at six.

Sakura smiled and continued to twirl, while he went back to his Uchiha-related musings.

When he thought about it, it was no easy feat to make him distrustful of someone. He was a jovial, overly friendly kind of guy by nature. People generally liked him and he generally liked people. He had made quite a lot of friends during his time on active duty and he still kept in touch with most of them, even if they happened to be living on the other side of the world. Now an Academy teacher, he met all kinds of individuals on a daily basis – from his students' parents through his students, both actual and former, to the future jounin instructors – and he could honestly say that he had never encountered someone as ill-spirited as Fugaku in his entire career.

Most of the time it was impossible to say if he was happy, sad, angry or maybe just constipated. To top it all, he was also quite possibly the worst father in the history of Konoha and it was saying something. The way he had treated his older son made Kizashi seriously reconsider on multiple occasions whether or not violence was an answer, because one solid whack to the head and a round of verbal lashing would maybe make him think twice before he attempted to do the same thing to the poor kid ever again.

In short, the Uchiha patriarch had an uncanny ability to push his buttons and one of these day there would be no Mebuki or Mikoto to stop Kizashi from committing felony.

"Stop spacing out. We're going to be late!" Mebuki came into the living room, wearing one of her favourite green dresses. She was smiling like there was no tomorrow as well, which made him want to run for the hills. It was her trademark I'm-planning-something-and-you're-not-going-to-like-it smile and it never failed to make him feel at least slightly queasy.

"I's ready an hour ago," he responded with a frown. "And I don't even want to go there."

"Don't be a spoilsport, honey." She made her way over to where he was sitting to straighten his yukata even though it was as straight as it could possibly ever be. "You're going to love it!"

"Probably as much as I love going to the dentist."

His wife ignored him and instead proceed to squeal over Sakura, who looked like she wasn't excited to go anywhere as well, though for entirely different reasons. Yes, she liked her new dress, but she was very shy and her mother's promise of a playmate her age had only succeeded in making her resemble a stuttering tomato, if tomatoes could actually stutter. If he knew his little girl at all, he suspected she was going to hide behind either of them for the entire affair, even if that mysterious playmate of hers turned out to be a unicorn.

"Can we just go and have it over with?" He asked and he could swear Mebuki's face went through all shades of purple before she stormed out, growling something about her handbag.

Sakura tugged on his sleeve after a moment when she was apparently sure that her mother wouldn't be within earshot.

"Daddy, can you stay with me the whole time?" Her voice was quiet and teary. "I don't wanna be alone."

He scooped her up and blew a raspberry on the side of her neck to distract her and it worked. She giggled happily, forgetting for a moment about her bound of anxiety.

"I will if you want me to," he said as he looked into her eyes. "But I think you'll be fine. You've met Itachi-kun before, right?"

She nodded.

"And you liked him, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then you're probably going to like his sibling too."

There was a long pause.

"Probably?" She still appeared unsure. Not for the first time he wondered how she was ever going to become a ninja with something so powerful holding her back.

"You'll be fine, flower," he said as he hugged her.

He could only hope he wouldn't be forced to eat his words.

-o-o-o-

When they finally made it to the Uchiha household, a few things became clear almost instantly.

Firstly, Uchiha Sasuke was nothing like his older brother. Secondly, Kizashi was going to lose his hearing if said boy didn't shut up in the next minute or so, because the volume of his voice had a potential to give a deaf person a headache. Lastly, his wife was seriously mental if she thought even for a moment he was going to let their daughter play with that spawn of Satan unsupervised. Or at all.

Kizashi was actually starting to pity Fugaku a teeny-tiny bit. No wonder he was so sour all the time if he had to deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis. On the other hand it was kind of funny to watch the Uchiha wince every time his son spoke an octave louder. He was waiting for the moment when the man would finally snap, but it looked like it wasn't going to happen any time soon, which was a shame. Any type of entertainment would be highly appreciated – literally everything just to tune out the loudness of the youngest Uchiha offspring.

Sasuke rambled on completely undeterred by anything about the most random of things and it was obvious that he was very excited. Children were generally rather loud, but that was something akin to a nightmare. How was it even possible that this hybrid of a human and a parrot was related to Itachi?

Then again who could really blame the boy? Living with the ever-quiet Uchihas who were stoic to the point of resembling statues most of the time was probably torture enough to bring someone to the brink of sanity. No wonder the child was about ready to lose his marbles. It was certainly not a good environment to grow up in, especially for someone as energetic as Sasuke.

Though, no matter how much he felt for the kid, the noise he was emitting still made his head hurt like crazy.

"I'm sorry. He isn't usually like that," Mikoto apologized to them again with a very troubled expression.

Her eyes were constantly flickering to Sakura, who was – as predicted – hiding behind Kizashi's legs. She had been there for the last twenty minutes and there was no saying for how long she was going to stay in her current spot. To her credit, she was glancing at Sasuke every now and then. It was a sign that she wasn't too overwhelmed with the situation. With time, she would maybe actually decide to at least say hi.

"Oh, don't worry. It's fine," Mebuki waved off her friend's concern with an easy smile. "He is such a darling!"

Only their current company stopped Kizashi from facepalming himself. He just knew staying at home had been a good idea.

He looked around the room to see the others' reactions.

Itachi was pretending that nothing was going on, Fugaku looked ready to combust, Mikoto was trying to get her younger son to behave without flat out telling him to shut up and Mebuki had a smile glued onto her face as if she didn't even know what expression was appropriate for the occasion.

And Sasuke and Sakura were doing their thing, which did nothing to alleviate the tension that was slowly accumulating in the Uchiha's living room.

The atmosphere was slowly but surely becoming quite suffocating. Kizashi was one second away from bolting from his seat and leaving, when something rather unexpected happened.

Sasuke fell silent.

His sudden decision to stop talking was followed by a moment of absolute silence. Everyone was looking at the boy, who in turned seemed a little apprehensive of their undivided attention, even though the point of his ramblings was probably to gain it in the first place. He shifted from one foot to the other, looked briefly at his mother and then ran out of the room like a bat from hell.

Maybe Kizashi had been wrong and the apple didn't fall far from the tree after all. Or maybe it was already too late to save the poor child from the merciless clutches of insanity?

He was about to voice his observation – just to see Fugaku's reaction, because he was too bored for words – when Sasuke came back. He walked straight to Kizashi, bowed and mumbled something that sounded like a question, but it was impossible to understand what he was trying to say.

"Repeat," Kizashi said in his best teacher voice while crossing his arms over his chest.

"Can I play with Sakura?"

He didn't know what has surprised him more – the fact that the child knew his daughter's name or the fact that he actually had some manners. The two of them stared each other in the eye in a very bizarre man-to-man-silent-conversation short of thingy before Kizashi slowly nodded.

Apparently the surprises were never-ending, because Sakura chose that moment to emerge from behind him. She was shaking slightly and her face was the colour of her dress if not darker, but there was a sense of purpose in the way she walked up to Sasuke. Truthfully it looked like she was going to war instead of trying to make a friend, but he was impressed all the same. She wasn't usually that forward with other children.

"Hi."

Her voice sounded squeaky, but it didn't seem to bother Sasuke in the slightest. The boy grinned at her, showing off the gap where his second upper left tooth should be, and he pulled a toy from behind his back that Kizashi had missed altogether in his dazzled state, and handed it to Sakura.

"Hi."

His daughter smiled softly as she hugged the fluffy dinosaur to her chest.

Mebuki emitted a sound that was most certainly not human and Mikoto giggled.

Shortly after the younger children went to Sasuke's room to play with Itachi as their guardian slash babysitter. When they were gone, the women started to whisper about something as they made their way to the kitchen to finish dinner. Kizashi didn't want to know what they were talking about, he really didn't, but he had a sneaky suspition had to do with the little display they had witnessed a few minutes ago.

Fugaku went back to staring at his cup of tea and ignoring him completely, which was admittedly not a surprise. Honestly, a tree had better manners.

The rest of the afternoon passed without any major hitch. Mikoto's cooking was supreme which made up for her husband's lack of any social skills. They bid their goodbyes shortly after seven and made their way home. He and Mebuki walked arm in arm while Sakura was skipping ahead of them, obviously in a very good mood and in the most carefree state he had ever seen her.

Kizashi smiled.

If it meant that she would be so happy, he supposed he could get used to dealing with Uchihas.

After all, there were things more important than old animosities and Sakura just so happened to be one of them.

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><p><strong>AN**: I know that in canon-verse, Sakura's father is only a genin, but I think that if he has the potential to become a Hokage (he was one in "Road to Ninja", after all), I can as well make him a jounin ;)


	2. DAY 2

**A/N**: Sorry I'm late with this, but there were things going on yesterday (mainly a huge migraine and a lot of sleeping to fight said migraine off) that had made it hard for me to finish this story on time. Not to mention the fact that I'm not very good at writing from pre-Shippuuden Sasuke's POV.  
>What I wanted to do was to essentially put Sasuke's perspective on his deflection from Konoha only a short while after he had left. The thing I was trying to portray was his homesickness and the sense of overpowering loss of something he thinks he will never be able to get back.<br>I hope you'll like it.  
>Enjoy!<p>

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><p><strong>Day 2 - BACK THEN<strong>

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><p><em>Summary<em>: "Her presence made the darkness within him dissipate a little." Sasuke's POV, pre-Shippuuden_  
>Rating<em>: K+  
><em>Genre<em>: Angst  
><em>Warnings<em>: none****  
><strong>**

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><p>"<em>Well you only need the light when it's burning low<br>Only miss the sun when it starts to snow  
>Only know you love her when you let her go<br>Only know you've been high when you're feeling low  
>Only hate the road when you're missing home<br>Only know you love her when you let her go_"  
>"Let her go", Boyce Avenue ft. Hannah Trigwell<p>

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><p>People were breakable creatures. In a way, they reminded him of glass – no matter how much time you spent hardening and preparing it for the worst, there were still things that could make it shatter into pieces and sometimes it was simply impossible to put them back together.<p>

Sasuke has been broken years before he had decided to deflect from Konoha.

The loss of his family and the torment of living through visions of their demise were only on the surface of what had first made him crack and then proceeded to destroy him completely day by day, leaving him with splinters of twisted memories impaled deeply into his already bleeding soul. It was how it was and he had learnt to accept the bitter truth that he would never be whole again. The experience he had been forced to live through at such a young age would make grown men weep and sob in anguish, but he had prevailed and even if there was absolutely no hope for him – even if he was going to stay broken forever – he could live with that burden. He had been doing it already for years.

The night sky stretching above his head into an endless display of darkness and flickering lights helped significantly in taking his mind off his less than pleasant thoughts. He was lying on his back in a clearing a few miles away from the base. It was hidden in thick foliage and he had discovered this spot shortly after arriving into Oto. As far as he could tell, he was the only one who knew about it. If someone had indeed stumbled upon it by accident in the past, they certainly didn't bother to visit it, at least not on a regular basis, and since other nins he lived with were mostly highly apprehensive about him, if not outright scared, no one ever dared to follow him there, which meant it was his to keep.

It was essentially his sanctuary and he didn't want to share it with anyone. The peacefulness it offered him in times of emotional turmoil was not something he took for granted these days. Orochimaru was a harsh teacher and training with him was exhausting, both physically and mentally, like nothing Sasuke had ever experienced before, but it always left his mind numb to the point where he didn't even have the energy to think.

His mind was filled to the brim with visions of his past. Since Orochimaru was currently away and his training was halted due to his absence, he had too much time on his hands and the restlessness was making him melancholic. It wasn't only the massacre or his last meeting with his brother he was reminiscing about, but rather everything that had happened before his decision to leave had been set in stone.

He caught himself many times wondering what Naruto would think about something and whether or not it would make the dobe laugh. Their stupid conversations weren't something he expected to remember so fondly, but he did so all the same. Then there were moments when he wanted, once again, to have the opportunity to talk with Kakashi or maybe train with him, because that month before the last part of the Chunin Exams was actually one of his best memories. Sometimes he would remembered the entire Konoha 12 and all the times they had spared with each other or had gone out to have lunch together. When he was feeling particularly nostalgic, he would recall the view from his bedroom window in the apartment complex he had been living in since the massacre, because there were no windows in his room in the base and the darkness seemed simply too overwhelming on some days.

But by far the most persistent memory that simply refused to leave him alone was that of Sakura.

When he let his mind wander, usually in that brief moment in-between the actual sleep and the half-lucid state before you fall into the arms of Morpheus, the first thing he always saw were her eyes. He couldn't explain it, but it seemed as if his subconsciousness knew better than he did what he needed to truly relax.

The light green of her irises and the mischievous twinkle that seemed to permanently reside within her overly expressive orbs were actually the very first things he had noticed about her all these years ago.

Then there was the gentle curve of her full lips when she smiled and that one dimple in her left cheek, which appeared only when she grinned widely. For some reason her smiles had always had the power to make him smile. There was so much happiness and innocence hidden in that simple gesture and it never failed to make his breath hitch a little.

There were other things he remembered about her as well – small things that had seemed so insignificant before they came back to haunt him.

How she blushed when he would look at her. How she would twirl a piece of hair around her finger when in deep thought. How her hair smelled of strawberries and how it looked in the early morning light. How her arms felt around his shoulders. How she laughed when Naruto said something funny. How a simple "I love you" sounded when falling from her lips. How she looked when she cried and how much the knowledge he had been the reason behind her tears ate away at his conscience.

She was annoying and loud, and obnoxious, and strange, but she was also kind, loving, and gentle. No matter how much he wanted to deny it, he actually liked her. Her presence made the darkness within him dissipate a little. She was like the moon on the night sky – chasing the overbearing shadows in his soul away with her light. Among all others who had tried, she was the one able to reach him. That's why her words could make it so much harder to simply walk away from her – because he cared and her confession had been almost enough to stop him.

Their bonds weren't meant to be that strong. He missed them and he missed her, and it was really not something he had anticipated.

Back then, in Konoha, he couldn't have cared less about her presence. He had taken her for granted and he was starting to regret it, because letting her go and leaving her behind with a broken heart was a mistake. He didn't know what would have been a better alternative, but maybe if he had spent some time with her, it wouldn't feel as if a chance of a lifetime had passed him by.

He sighed and lifted himself up into a sitting position. With his arms resting on his knees, he looked up at the moon and his lips stretched into a small smile.

Thinking about the what-ifs and seemingly endless could-have-beens now was futile. He had already chosen his path and there was no turning back at this point.

He would hold onto those memories – onto Naruto's laughter, Kakashi's wisdom and Sakura's love - but they weren't going to stop him. They were going to fuel his determination and help him in becoming stronger, so when the time came, he would be able to return to them and maybe even to repay them for all they have ever done to make his life a little bit better.

For now he would come here when time allowed - to this clearing in the middle of nowhere – and he would let himself remember.

It would have to be enough.

After all, there was no other choice, but to move forward.


End file.
